


Devil's Swing

by Snake (Fatality145)



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Ficlets, M/M, one sided abusive relationships txt it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:55:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fatality145/pseuds/Snake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>└ The Outsider/Daud ficlets, from the branding to the fall.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>He heard the voice before he saw the source.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>                “They think you nothing more than a guttersnipe, dearest Daud,” It started, a twisting shadow of vibrato before they condensed, walking over to him, “But we know better, right?”</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>                “The Outsider,” He simply said, watching that smile spread. The sharpness of the teeth shown was as piercing as the lance which seared into the back of his hand and between his shoulder blades.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>                He always felt different after that.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Devil's Swing

**Author's Note:**

> _'Another stroke down my back,_  
>  Tasting all the flames that are licking around my neck and making me insane,  
> As they pull me down into my grave.
> 
>  
> 
> _I'm living inside a dead lie,_  
>  Controlled by the Devil's eyes and I don't mind it,  
> Draw my ace up and roll my snake eyes nightly. 
> 
>  
> 
> _It doesn't mean a God damn thing,_  
>  Until your deep inside dancing to the Devil's swing,'
> 
>  
> 
> [Devil's Swing || Godsmack](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2GRdUsHDcc)

**_I. Matter of Time -_ **

It was like drowning without water, but with the foul taste of polluted brine laced in his mouth and on his tongue and down his throat, ozone and anti-air constricting his lungs like cobwebs. He never really understood why it always happened, usually, after that, while he was asleep. Maybe, perhaps, because he would be off guard. Then, he thought, even in sleep - it wasn’t down, not really. There was always a personal shell, armour at his blind spot, long years of learning to stay only _just_ unconscious so that anything around would wake him up.

 

                Unorthodox, yes, but when you walked around with a multitude of targets painted to your back, it was something that you needed to stay alive.

 

                He felt displaced, as though the ground beneath his feet was not stable as he took steps forward. He wasn’t as tired as he was just fatigued down to the bone, each footfall toward his door like walking through water.

 

                The displacement, he found, stretched far longer than just his being as an endless pale abyss unfolded before his sight. He knew what this was, and he had to laugh at the fact that all the books on it definitely got it wrong, by a long shot. He heard the voice before he saw the source.

 

                “They think you nothing more than a guttersnipe, dearest Daud,” It started, a twisting shadow of vibrato before they condensed, walking over to him, “But we know better, right?”

 

                “The Outsider,” He simply said, watching that smile spread. The sharpness of the teeth shown was as piercing as the lance which seared into the back of his hand and between his shoulder blades.

 

                He always felt different after that.

 

**_II. Pacing Death’s Trail –_ **

****

Everything was a different colour, now, de-saturated with a high contrast, and everything smelled different, too, either dampened or enhanced.  The water of the Flooded District didn’t seem to stick to him as much as he passed through it, muted whispers in his ear and chilled breath at his neck leading him on.

 

                Rolling his eyes at the situation, though more at himself, the murky water slid from his boots as he stepped up onto the outstretch of a pitiful dock. It was pathetic, really, chasing shadows that he knew were so much more than empty lacks of light, but he couldn’t stop, nor could he reject the beckons that were thinly veiled threats. He’d tried, of course, definitely.

 

                It was like no alcohol, no drug, he’d ever had, an addicting accumulation of both, and he instantly felt better as time slowed to a stop around him, brand flaring red through material. His hands closed around the whale bone which murmured to him, hissing, and the worn leather, making to touch the engraved front before opting against it with a twist of his mouth.

 

                “It seems to me, that there are so many things that they don’t share,”

 

                Freezing fingers touched the side of his face and the instinct to flinch away from them had long been bled from him, instead turning into his palm, eyes attuned to the spectre which crouched on the bare edge of the shrine, unaffected by the gravity.

 

                “Doesn’t that seem strange? When it’s all for the one, but the one is neither you, nor me, nor anyone?” The Outsider asked him, the smoky tendrils ebbing out from his fingers licking at his skin absently.

 

                “That’s Dunwall for you,” He huffed, unable to take his sights away from those which regarded him, turning from amused to sinister in a bare moment.

 

                “…They say dead men don’t pull triggers. Well, prove them wrong, Daud,”

 

                And then his breath was taken again, swallowed down, and he would let it happen, despite the Outsider being more cliché than he really liked.

 

                He always watched more carefully after that.

 

**_III. Cold as Stone -_ **

 

It complicated him sometimes. It wasn’t black or white. It wasn’t payment on a desk and a name and mug shot. But, then again, none of this was, and that’s what made it so damn infuriatingly _exhilarating_ , with his chest pressed up against his wall, another pressed up against his shoulders, forked tongue at his neck.

 

                Gooseflesh flecked his skin in small mounds as cold shadows ran over him, ghost hands seeping under his clothes, leaving faint freeze burns in his flesh that would soon become numb. Articulate fingers undid his vestments, shedding them down from his torso and letting them drop to the ground with a dull thud. Those hands always felt better than the shaded ones, semi-corporeal but still there, tracing scars that could have been much worse if not for the brand, most stark on his body.

 

                “…Do beings such as you even enjoy this?” He had to ask, slightly breathless, forehead pressed to his forearm braced on the wall.

 

                “Perhaps not as you do, but I can appreciate the sentiment,” That voice answered him, like ice water down his spine, not akin, for once, to the hands which swept down his stomach, stealing his warmth.

 

                He reached back to grab at him, growling lowly in frustration when all that came was smoke. Sometimes (or most of the time), the Outsider didn’t want to be touched, preferring instead to do the touching, and while he wouldn’t _complain_ , he wasn’t selfish, either, even if the shade recieved a different kind of gratification from the act.

 

                The ties undid from his slacks, smooth hands pushing the waist of them down his thighs to just above his knees, fingertips trailing back up the inner curve, muscles twitching beneath the touch.  The Outsider was always so intricate and tactile that sometimes he had to think that maybe he was the spectre’s first in this aspect, something new and strange and beautiful under his fingers. He knew that wasn’t the case, though. The Outsider was time’s beginning and its end. He wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last, and, while he would try to muzzle it, drown it down, there was always that annoying pang of something _like_ jealousy, but not quite.

 

                All those thoughts would be flushed away, though, as fingers would close around his cock, oddly warm, because that attention was all on him, now, only him as far as he knew, and that’s what mattered, letting the blood run south. He was soon hard, the Outsider’s teeth at the shell of his ear, the whispers and shadows around them. The Outsider knew him too well, the certain pressure points to make him hitch and buck, and he didn’t care if he took it easy.

 

                “Do your men not know how to knock?” He was suddenly asked, and he glanced over his shoulder, cocking a brow, the expression accented by the faint flush over the bridge of his nose.

 

                “What?” And then it occurred to him, sharply letting out the breath he had been holding, “ _Don’t_.” As soon as the word left his mouth, the Outsider was gone, shadows and all, the door to his quarters pushed open.

 

                He always locked his door after that.

 

**_IV. Come Clarity –_ **

****

“Must you?”

 

                “No.”

 

                “Then why are you?”

 

                “You would silently call for me if I wasn’t, dearest Daud,”

 

                His shoulders slackened as he let out a terse breath, narrowing his eyes, half of his face pressed into the covers, the back of his head to the Outsider. He knew, of course he knew, and he was daft to think otherwise, feeling those eyes on his shoulders, the slant of his back. There was no tangible feeling, but he knew the shadows were moving over him, side eyeing the deity which was now crouched over him.

 

                He sighed, rolling onto his back beneath him before the Outsider’s anti-weight settled atop his hips, looking down at him, tipping his head. The only light in his room was what came off his brand, a sanguine tinge casting more dark over the other’s face, reflecting off his ebony eyes.

 

                “I’m surprised you can sleep, can’t you feel it flow?”

 

                “Feel _what_ flow?” He asked, furrowing his brow, the scar over his eye creasing. The Outsider was too ambiguous for his own good.

 

                “Big changes are coming soon, all the pieces set, and you may be the key,”

 

                “For some reason, I doubt that,” He may be, slightly, pigheaded, tenacious, but he wasn’t stupid. The Outsider always saw things on the bigger scale, the start and not always the end, “If it’s all just a game to you, then I don’t want to play,” He added, sighing.

 

                “A butterfly’s wings can start tornadoes, don’t you know?”

 

                His tired eyes slit up at him. He was no kind of delicate creature, he was more like a—

 

                “And a wolf’s howl can deafen,” That smile came back, and even though he knew he shouldn’t have, knew it was more cynical than anything else, he still _liked_ it.

 

                He always slept better after that.

 

**_V. Of Wolf and Man -_ **

 

The blood of an Empress stained his fingers, deeper than the skin and sinew which barely held him together, mortal coil wound so tight sometimes it just _hurt_. His flesh went raw as he tried to clean it off, possibly hoping, too, to remove the brand which marked him. If things had been different then, they were even more so, now, simply because it was just removed, blank, slate, with the symbol to always remind him that now he slept undisturbed by any outside force, that now the whispers had changed and were no longer him, hooks in his shoulders keeping only the slightest of contacts.

 

                “You can’t keep strangling me, and you can’t keep ignoring me,”

 

                Always, he would receive no answer, boots treading in places only they had been; only they knew, and it was never the same, anymore. He’d tried to clean his palate and rid himself of the taste that he kept reminding himself of, clawing at the cold burn which had long since healed over his ribcage, in the perfect shape of a hand.

 

                Nobody knew, except for _him_ , of course, he would _have_ to know, and that was the way he would keep it, because under it all, it was weak, disgustingly so, and he was not weak. But he couldn’t leave it alone, and he would never let him forget, as though that was his aim all along.

 

                He did not believe the Outsider hated him, no. There was nothing to hate when you found slight amusement in things that did not go your way, only because it wasn’t what you were expecting. He knew it wasn’t as it was before, either. The Outsider just didn’t care, either way, anymore. Indifferent, and that was worse than anything else that could have come.

 

                He never slept well after that.

**Author's Note:**

> doN'T look at me it's like buttfuck o'clock in the morning i don't know what im doing harsh forced laughter and rolls into the morning sun


End file.
